Recently On Home
Featured Sponsors
Little wonder that consumer psychologist Kit Yarrow of Golden Gate University in San Francisco fears a growing “sense of emptiness and depression” as millennials age. “They’re putting their resources and energy and validation and self-worth into what people who aren’t close to them think of them, which is fame.”
I’ve long been suspect of generational forecasts done at ridiculously early stages. When Howe, Strauss and Matson put forward their conclusions about the millennial generation, the oldest interview could have been no more than 19, and the youngest clocking in at the ripe old age of five. Please. Such forecasts began as a cottage industry with Boomers (and then, fairly late in the game when most were already in their thirties) as marketers realized that there was a huge demographic “bulge” in the American population, and it would be wise to chart their interests. But the rush to diagnose the next generation, and the next, at ever earlier stages has proven ludicrous. Who could have forecast Hippies becoming Yuppies - that those at Woodstock would populate Wall Street?
But there is a larger concern here than the erroneous nature of generational predictions. It’s not whether we got the millennials wrong – we did – but whether now that we have them “right,” we will consider what it will take to reach them. Because they will face emptiness and depression. And more.
Because millennials are anything but rising. They are falling.
James Emery White
Sources
Neil Howe, William Strauss and R.J. Matson, Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (Vintage, 2000).
Neil Howe, William Strauss and R.J. Matson, 13th Generation (Vintage, 1993).
“Majority of freshmen view gay marriage as OK,” Francisco Vara-Orta, Los Angeles Times, posted on latimes.com, January 19, 2007.
“The goal: Wealth and fame,” Sharon Jayson, USA Today, Wednesday, January 10, 2007, 1D and 2D.
“How the New Generation of Well-Wired Multitaskers Is Changing Campus Culture,” Information Technology section, The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 5, 2007, pp. B10-B15.
